William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy

Just the facts, but far more complete than the other Johnny-come-lately
"6 books and out" lists out there.

All lists are in real-world chronological order. The chronology of the "Sprawl"
series is Johnny Mnemonic short story - New Rose Hotel short story - Burning
Chrome short story - Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive. Other stories
in Burning Chrome fit more or less tightly into the imagined future of the series.
By the time Gibson wrote the Skinner's Room short story - virtual light - Idoru
- All Tomorrow's Parties sequence set closer in time, the near future had turned
out different from the "Sprawl" future.

ISBN 0-441-56956-0 , later ISBN: 0-441-56959-5
Cover: The original Ace paperback had a cover of a sytylized robot by JamesWarhola,
Andy Warhol's cousin. Later reprints had a digital face and hand by Richard
Berry

Count Zero

My favorite, less detached, more varied themes, strong characters. Most
readers prefer Neuromancer because it's more action-packed, but check
out this quote.

All Tomorrow's Parties

All Tomorrow's Parties is the title of a Velvet Underground song.

The Bay Bridge from "Skinner's Room" and "virtual light",
Laney from "Idoru" is living in the box city from "Thirteen Views
of a Cardboard City", Chevette from "virtual light", Rydell from
"virtual light" and "Idoru", the Idoru from "Idoru",
even Gibson's watch collecting obsession from his wired article. Nothing wrong
with leitmotif recycling, but Gibson's plot mojo was stolen by Dr. Evil when
he wrote this. His descriptions of Laney surfing the interstices of data are
unrewarding, it's as vague as Asimov's psychohistory and Frank Herbert's oracular
melange. ONLY buy this if you have all of the Sprawl series and you loved virtual
light and Idoru.

UK hardcover

Viking Penguin,1999

Hardback ISBN: 0-670-87557-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 0-670-87558-0

This came out before the hardcover.

US hardcover

Putnam, 1999

Hardcover ISBN: 0399145796

Pattern Recognition

Gibson's first novel set in the present, out January 27, 2003. Sounds like
the same concerns with over-mediated existence and fame as in Idoru. Bruce
Sterling
reviews it in Wired February 2003. Gibson said at a book reading he consciously
set two challenges: set it in the present and avoid the ellipsis and jump-cuts,
staying with one character throughout.

US Hardcover

Putnam, 2003

Hardcover ISBN: 0399149864

Short Stories and Articles

The stories in Burning Chrome were published in various magazines and two
were published in the Mirrorshades anthology edited by Bruce Sterling.

"Burning Chrome" Story List

"Johnny Mnemonic"

1981, originally published in Omni magazine

"The Gernsback Continuum"

(William Gibson's first professional publication, originally published in Universe
11, 1981
also contained in: Mirrorshades
made into a brief TV film, Tomorrow Calling in the UK, 1995

(with Bruce Sterling) originally published in Omni; also in Mirrorshades

"New Rose Hotel"

originally published in Omni

"The Winter Market"

originally published in Stardate 1986

"Dogfight"

(with Michael Swanwick) originally published in Omni 1985

"Burning Chrome".

originally published in Omni 1982, Omni

Mirrorshades

Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling is an excellent cyberpunk
anthology which includes The Gernsback Continuum and Red Star,
Winter Orbit.

US hardback

Arbor House, December 1986

ISBN 0877958688

US Paperback

Ace Books, July 1988

ISBN 0-441-53382-5

Count Zero serialization

Count Zero was published as a serial before it was published as a novel, in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. The January '86 issue has part one,
the February issue has part two, and the March issue has part three. The January
cover is devoted to the story, with art by Hisaki Yasuda.

Rocket Radio

Ruminations on technology reuse and meaning. Restates themes from the Sprawl
series as non-fiction, more personal.

Rolling Stone, June 15th 1989, "Technology for the Nineties" section
Photograph: head outlined by headphones, phone jack, circuits by William
Duke.

Darwin

Academy Leader in Cyberspace : First Steps

This is a dry academic book of original contributions about cyberspace.
Most of it is pointless pontification except for a fascinating history of Lucasfilm's
"habitat", one of the first avatar-based communities. Gibson's
three page story is an incredibly dense and mostly beyond me, truly fragments
of a hologram rose. The girl Kelsey in an Australian room from Doing TV/Darwin
reappears, interspersed with musings on technological reuse and references to
data mining. I think "Academy Leader" refers to the countdown numerals at
the beginning of a strip of film. I think the story is about the meta-act
of zeroing in on details.

Foreword and Academy Leader in Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

Karl Reinsch notes that Academy Leader also appears in this collection, and
writes

Gibson's intro talks about the similarities/differences between artboys
and geeks, how he thought himself an artboy but people thought he was a geek,
and how "Academy
Leader" was an attempt to declare himself an
artboy once and for all.

The intro to "Academy Leader", presumably written by the editors
points out the allusions to William Burroughs and his cut-up techniques in
the piece, along with the references to how Gibson coined the term "cyberspace".

The Nazi Lawn Dwarf Murders (unpublished)

Stein Gjoen alerted me that Tom Maddox (another fine writer, and Gibson's partner
on the two X-Files scripts) claims in a 1989 article at http://home.pacbell.net/tmaddox/virus23.html
that Gibson wrote a story "The Nazi Lawn Dwarf Murders,"

Mr. Fang points out that this story also appeared in The Year's Best SF vol.
3 (edited by David G. Hartwell and published in 1998 by HarperPrism)

Skinner's Room

This short story appeared in the catalog for the Visionary San
Francisco exhibition. The characters and takeover of the Bay Bridge by the
homeless reappear in Virtual Light, and then again in All Tomorrow's Parties.

Blasted Dreams in Mr. Buk's Window

A post-9/11 article, originally published in the Canadian newspaper
The National Post on September 20, 2001, entitled "Blasted Dreams in Mr.
Buk's Window". Gibson refers to it and reprints it on
his blog as "Mr. Buk's Window". The themes of dust and decay
running through his work (The Finn's shop, the gomei in the Winter Market short
story, Agrippa, etc.) slam into the mega-destruction and choking dust of the
World Trade Center attack.

Dead Man Speaks

Writing that originally appeared in Forbes ASAP magazine supplement, available
as part of his blog.

William Gibson Blog

www.williamgibsonbooks.com
was set up along with the publication of Pattern Recognition. It
has forums, a useful set of links, and a blog
where Gibson writes. The blog entries are of interest to any fan , and some
like the Up the Line speech are spectacular. There's some law operating that
each has to have the word "mediated" or "construct" in it.

Up the Line

Gibson spoke at the Directors Guild of America’s Digital Day, Los Angeles,
May 17, 2003. He draws out the arc of recognizing patterns (as in his novel's
title) from fire flickering on cave walls to painting to films to media to digital,
how it's become a prosthetic memory and how digitization may affect it. Sensational
stuff, the best thing he's written in years. The text
is available as part of his blog at williamgibsonbooks

The Road to Oceania

Interesting op-ed piece in the June 25, 2003 New York Times about Orwell's
1984 and how that surveillance society has turned into a total
information society. "It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone,
anyone at all, to keep a secret."Abstract,
full article available for purchase.

Other Media

Agrippa

Ruminations on memory and family, fragmented. Released as a limited edition
encrypted program on floppy, designed to self-destruct when read. Some
versions came with self-destructing artwork by Dennis Ashbaugh. Eventually
decoded by hackers, versions of the text are available on the net.

Visuals by Dennis Ashbaugh and text by William Gibson. Contains a floppy
disc. This is a self-destructing book: images fade, disc crashes. Gibson's
text is available on the net.

"A collaboration between author William Gibson, publisher Kevin
Begos Jr, and artist Dennis Ashbaugh. This art-work contains engravings
by Ashbaugh which appear or disappear in light and an on-disk semi-autobiographical
poem by William Gibson which is unreadable after having been read once.
Agrippa is notable because in many respects it blurs the lines about what
art is, and adds fuel to the fire on issues of property rights and intellectual
property. A highlight of 1992 was the release of Gibson's poem on to the
net".

The alleged Alien ^3 Script

A well-written (surprise!) script for the movie. Themes of Russian/American/Chinese
conflict in space, virus. There is some dispute whether the versions on
the net are genuine. The merits of Gibson's script over the eventual
filmed script (story by Vincent Ward, screenplay by David Giler, Walter
Hill and Larry Ferguson) are often debated in newsgroups.

The Gernsback Continuum / Tomorrow Calling

Apparently The Gernsback Continuum was made into a short film, Tomorrow
Calling, in the UK, 1995

Other Movie Attempts

"Cabana Boys Productions" had rights to Neuromancer, they reverted to Gibson.

At one point Malcolm McLaren had rights to Burning Chrome

Johnny Mnemonic movie

Directed by Robert Longo and starring Keanu Reeves (details at the IMDB).
Gibson himself says Hollywood forces changed the movie from his and
Longo's vision, and that the Japanese cut of the movie (in English with
Japanese subtitles) is closer to their intent. [$$$ anyone know
how to get a Japanese video in the U.S.?]

The plot is quite different than that of the short story, but some core
ideas remain. Because of overlapping rights, the Molly Millions character
does not appear in the film.

"He's not transporting drugs or jewels. He's moving information. The
computer
chip in his head is overloaded with white-hot data. He has twenty-four
hours before the overload fries his brain -- and he's got an army of Yakuza
killers on his trail.

"And his only allies are a cybernetic dolphin and a sexy streetfighter
with a hardwired taste for violence...

"In 1984, William Gibson's Neuromancer -- winner of the Hugo, Nebula,
and Philip K.Dick Awards -- introduced the concept of cyberspace to the
world -- and revolutionized the way we look at the future. Rolling Stone
labeled him 'science fiction's hottest author' -- and in the years since,
his incomparably inventive body of work has made his name synonymous with
'visionary'. Now for the first time, Gibson's corrupt, computer-driven
future is brought to the screen in Johnny Mnemonic -- based on a story
previously published in Gibson's highly praised collection, Burning Chrome
.

"This book, illustrated with exclusive photographs, contains the full
text of William Gibson's exciting original screenplay -- and the short
story that inspired it".

The British version of the Johnny Mnemonic book also has scenes from the movie.

New Rose Hotel movie

Gibson's New Rose Hotel short story was originally optioned by Malcolm
McLaren (of Sex Pistols and Buffalo Gals fame) at some point and was in
development for years. Abel Ferrara (director of Bad Lieutenant) made a low-budget
version of it starring Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken (details at the IMDB);
the screenplay is by Christ Zois.

It feels about 70 minutes long, but it's shoehorned into 48 or so minutes of
TV.

First Person Shooter episode of The X-Files (also co-written with Tom Maddox)

Episode 7ABX13, First aired March 5, 2000.

Fox says "A murder inside the high-tech world of a virtual reality game
leads Scully to battle a deadly digital character in order to save Mulder's
life."

I say the
promotional posters for the company "First Person Shooter" are
a hoot, but the "They're trapped in the computer and we can't shut it off"
is wayyy tired. It's just an excuse to explore the relationship between Scully
and Mulder (again Gibson has Scully rescuing Mulder instead of vice-versa),
and satirize the gender issues in violent games and sexy avatars. id software's
own Graeme Devine slammed the presentation of the game business in his .plan
file.

Neuromancer movie?

The February 1999 Wired 7.02 has a piece on director Chris Cunningham announcing
that Seven Arts will release a movie of Neuromancer in 2000. There was lots
of details at www.neuromancer.org ,
but by June 2000 the site is unreachable.

Floating Away track

Lech mentions that Gibson appears on the the (Not) Yellow Magic Orchestra's
album "Technodon" from 1993. Gibson penned the lyric for the third track,
"Floating Away" (or perhaps he - or Y.M.O. for that matter - puzzled together
earlier pieces). Anyhow, he's the one reading it. The album's available from
Toshiba EMI. The group's former label has the rights to the name "Yellow Magic
Orchestra".

Maybe it's just a twist of light tonight, but the city's so bright,
this whole town's in focus.
He'd always call me "Baby Strange."
He's hold my head and pray for rain.
Oh Johnny, let me be your dog star girl.
Let me curl inside.
The fire's just right.
The fire's just right in focus.
But, then he said, "Like, anything goes, baby."
But I don't know.
I just don't know.
Do you?
And how'd I ever get to this dead man's town where the rain, where
the rain falls down, where the rain falls down forever?
And then he said, "So much for you, so much for me," but I don't
see.
No, I don't see.
Do you?
And how'd I ever get to this dead man's town where the rain, where
the rain falls down, where the rain falls down forever?
Forever.
Forever.
Forever.
Forever.

(Deborah/Debbie Harry earlier made the Koo Koo album with an H.R. Giger SF-esque
cover, written, arranged, performed, and produced by the legendary disco R&B
powerhouse CHIC, for whom I maintain a similarly complete
discography. Small world.)

Memory Palace

"Script Hound" mentions that in 1992 at Art Futura, Barcelona, Montxo
Algora directed "Memory Palace", a performance show based on an original text
by William Gibson, featuring The theatre group "La Fura dels Baus", with images
by Karl Sims, Rebecca Allen, Mark Pellington and music by Peter Gabriel and others.

A 12 minute preview of this show will be screened in Hong Kong in April 2000
under the title "Speed"

The rest of the book was never completed, however, the first
few pages of the second installment are in "The
Ultimate Cyberpunk" book
, Pat Cadigan
editor, together with a couple of Gibson stories. And the cover of this book
is the same as the graphic novel.

Comic of Hinterlands

An interesting evocation of the fake paradise of the short story from Burning
Chrome.

adapted and illustrated by Gavin Lonergan
appeared in Freeflight #5 and #6, Dec/Jan 95 and Apr/May 95, published
by Thinkblots.

Here's the announcement of it on alt.cyberpunk:

From alt.cyberpunk.28400 March 1995 Message-ID: <D1xD95.BI1@iceonline.com> From: patricks@icebox.iceonline.com (Patrick Sauriol) Subject: MISC: Gibson story adapted to comic books There's going to be an adaptation of the William Gibson short story'Hinterlands' (from his compliation "Burning Chrome") in graphic format. Thework will appear in a independent comic book called "Freeflight", issues #5coming out this month) and concluding in #6 (in March).

The story is twenty pages in length, broken up into two segments to fit intothe anthology format. The work was adapted by Vancouver artist GavinLongeran, and has a Moebius-look to it. Gibson was involved in the adaptationprocess directly, between breaks and faxing while working on his adaptation of'Johnny Mnemonic'. As well, there's a computer-generated cover imagedepicting the alien seashell from the story.

Anyone interested in getting a copy can just cruise down to their localcomic shop at the end of the month and ask for it.

Computer game of Neuromancer

Role-playing adventure game with low-rez graphics

Interplay, 1988?,
distributed by Mediagenic for Apple II, Commodore C64, and Amiga computers.
Interplay's site still has the cheats for the game, but the originals are no
longer available. Hacked versions of all three are floating around on the Internet,
and theApple ][ and C64 games are playable on a PC using freeware/shareware
emulators. Supposedly the C64 version is the best, with better graphics
. **I'll pay money for a physical copy of the original
game. $$

Mentioned in Omni magazine, 1988?, Games section article.

"A real Neuromancer game, however, would probably kill or main
you or maybe give you a mild shock if you lost," Gibson quips. "It amuses
me that Neuromancer is now a product that you can actually play." Gibson,
however, doesn't play computer games. In fact, when he wrote the novel
he didn't even own a personal computer. "Maybe that's why I was able to
bring a sense of wonder to computing," he says.

Audio book of Neuromancer

William Gibson reads Neuromancer. Gibson's flat twang voice work can't express
the variety of all the characters, but his presentation of the narrative drive
of the tale is excellent. His narration reveals the spiritual center of the tale
in the forty hours/5 minutes that Case is flatlined in Neuromancer's cyberspace
construct; it's a passage of lyrical emotion. U2 is credited with some of the
incidental sounds in the background, but they're very incidental.

Electronic Book Versions

Voyager Co. (http://www.voyagerco.com)
sold an Expanded Book edition of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa
Overdrive on floppy disk for Mac and PC. It's surprisingly readable and
has search, comment, and bookmark features, but the content is very plain.
I would have liked to see the original artwork, the extensive reviews of
Neuromancer, etc.

Johnny Mnemonic computer game

From Sony, it blended video sequences with computer gaming. Hyped in Wired
magazine. As with seemingly every other Full-Motion Video game, it was touted as breaking
through the linearity problem of pre-canned video segments before its release,
and then after release the consensus was "it sucks like every other FMV game"

Links

AltaVista has lots of articles
if you search on +title:"William
Gibson". Yahoo's William
Gibson list is about 11 entries. Alas, since I started this list, many,
many of these links have died, many of them excellent artifacts of late 90's Web
design. There's a William Gibson story somewhere in there about the inelegant
decay of hyperlinked ideas into incoherency.

William Gibson's Yardshow, starting in 1996 at www.vkool.com/gibson/index1.html
was a full-on graphic set of the man's own pages, including several talks
and a bibliography ("nothing so much as the thinking man's David Hasslehoff").
The original iteration was the best, the last is available (for now) at http://www.sweatshop.com/idoru/